Book Review: Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God by Frank Schaeffer

Frank Schaeffer is an interesting fellow.  I first took notice of him when I watched Kevin Miller's film Hellbound?.  Frank gave some really nice insight in that movie, and articulated his thoughts in ways that really resonated with me.

Since then I have followed Frank and his writing, speaking, and even browsed through some of his recent paintings.  In all of these art forms, Frank is very honest.  Honest about himself, his life, his mistakes, his triumphs, and most noticeably, his thoughts about God and how they've changed from his early days as a Christian Right leader.

Let's just say that he has many thoughts about that:)

Frank has been self-publishing his recent books, so he's reached out to his readers for help.  I reviewed his last book, And God said, "Billy!", and you can read that review here.

I enjoyed that whole experience so much that I asked for a digital copy of his most recent book Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God.  How's that for a title?!

The subtitle for the book is How to Give Love, Create Beauty, and Find Peace.  I must be honest that from the first time I heard Frank say that phrase, I have been daily repeating it over and over in my head.  I have thought about those words a lot and how I might be able to inject them into the lifeless days that I often catch myself mindlessly trying to just get through, like a grey Walker hobbling my way down the highways of Georgia.

This subtitle became my mantra, or my prayer if you don't like the word mantra.

The refreshing thing about this book is that it's all honesty.  Frank tells stories about his life, and the people that are most important to him and then wrestles with the reasons for why and how they are in his life and impact him in the way that they do.

The title makes sense the further you read.  What seems like a paradox is actually just a way of saying Frank is living in between the tensions of belief and doubt.  Show me a Christian that says he has never doubted and I will show you a bald faced liar.  Show me a doubter who has never seen beauty and wondered if maybe it just might have been put there on purpose and I will... well, you get the idea.

Things I learned from reading this book:

- God is most real in Jesus.  The Bible is where we learn about a lot of different things, but let us not worship a book.

It this way I would say that "Love others as you love yourself" is more true and important than what Leviticus has to say about cubits and cloth mixing.

- Theology is messy.  Enjoying the simple things in life is a way to bring out the bright colours.  The things that give us joy helps others see the light and salt in us.

- I don't have all of the answers and I don't need to pretend that I do in order to have a rich and full life of loving God and others.

- It could be God speaking to me through the sunset or the twinkle in my son's eyes when he looks at me, or it could be some sort of scientific phenomenon.  I'm going to choose that it's both!


I will say that I really appreciated this book.  It's not humorous, as that was not it's purpose.  What I appreciated about it was that it was honest and real.

The honesty comes  through in that it's relatable.  I see myself with my own kids, playing street hockey out front, watching my kids dream the same dreams I once did not long ago, taking it all in and concluding that these moments are gifts.

These moments are what life is all about whether you believe in God or not... or perhaps if find yourself somewhere in the middle.

In the meantime...

create beauty, give love and find peace.

The tooth

This week I accomplished a great dad moment; I pulled my sons tooth right out of his mouth!

He'd lost a few already, but this was the first one that I got to pull out for him.  He winced, then with surprise looked at what had happened.  Then, when the excitement wore off, he realized that his mouth hurt a little bit.  Not too much, just a bit.  

It was one of his top front teeth.  One of those little baby teeth that has been in there since the beginning.  I held the tiny little sliver in my hand, feeling its smooth sheen with my thumb.  

I thought about the early days when that tooth first came in.  His gummy smile morphed into the toothy grin of a real child.  The infant Miles had suddenly turned into a boy.  He could eat things now.  

Miles has always had a tiny, little mouth.  His smiles seems too big for his mouth.  His gums jump out from under his scrunched up lips when he sees something funny or, perhaps, has a funny joke to share with others.  His humor has poured out of that little mouth for so long and I always considered him to be quite advanced in language and vocabulary.

There are still days when we ask him how he is feeling to which he would reply with "I'm find."

When the topic comes up, Miles will often chime in that he had fond memories of "the folk music vegetable."

These things make me laugh as much as the ways I love to laugh around him for the witty and creative humor that he dishes out so often.  These little things remind me that my grown up boy still has more growing up to do.  

I am reminded to enjoy these things while they last.  I'll never pull another top-front tooth from that little mouth.

I had cleared the space for the adult tooth to move in.  Next door the other adult front tooth (one that fell out on its own) has already moved half way in.  I can see those big teeth shifting things inside that tiny little area.  Those big chompers will no doubt change the tiny grin into a big boy smile.  

As I often think about the past, time moves on.  So much of the future has already flown by, now behind us.  So much of it is sealed up in things like that little tooth. 

We'll tuck it away and eventually bring it out again to laugh and think about that little mouth and how it's smile changed everything forever.

Car wreaks on my mind

These are thoughts from a few months ago when we went down to the coast (or is it up?) to visit some friends and celebrate a wedding.  This is the drive back on a very cold and snowy night.

We didn't see any cars in any ditches for over 1000 km.  Not until we were about 50 km from home did we slow down in a long lineup to inch our way passed a flipped car, a smashed up truck and a couple more cars laying skewed across the right lane.  The ice was unruly.  

We turned onto the next highway and came across a truck with loose straps sitting in the right lane.  One of the giant cement pieces had broken free from the trailer and rolled off the back into the ditch.  The wind was so strong that I was fighting to stay on the road.  

Cars in the ditch.  Trucks overturned.  People stranded.  Yet, we made it home without incident.

I really took some time to think about what happened, of more accurately, what didn't happen to us that night.  

Of course, I am glad that we did not get into an accident.  Thankful?  That's a tough word to use.  Seems kind of demented to be thankful that my family, and not others, avoided suffering on the roads that night.

The common practise of Christians is that we pray for safety.  We pray that God will protect us on the roads, in the schools, in the mess of the world.  I remember reading about a man who rejoiced when he found out that a small church group in Indonesia had a premonition to go to higher ground just before the Tsunami waves rolled in.  The group lived.  Thousands died, but the group lived.  Praise God?

We go about this practise as if it's exactly how God works.  Ask him to keep you safe and he will.  Yet, I know of people (even Christians) who have died in car accidents.  Though that small Church group survived the storm in Asia, there were thousand more Christians lost to the sea.

These car wreaks I drove by.  There were families in those cars.  I don't know if anyone died.  I hope not.  I pray that no one did.

I don't know why our car made it through that mess.  We stopped at A&W in Edson.  Did that have something to do with escaping the accident?  God was watching out for us?  Divine burger intervention?

If that's true.  If God was watching out for us then we're still missing pieces to this puzzle.  Why?  Because that must mean that God was not watching out for those who got in the accident.  It means that God did not watch out for those that die in the disasters that happen all over the world.

The lesson here, it seems, is that God is not in control.  We like to say that he's in control, but "control" doesn't quite seem like the right word anymore.

If this is control, where some people die and some people don't...

If its control when it all seems so random, then what kind of rules is this Controller playing by?

It's hard to justify the use of the word "control" in a situation like this that seems so out of control.  There are storms, car accidents, cancers, murderers, and whatever else people die from.  We need to stop calling all of this "God is in control".

If it's so, that he is in control, then lets agree that God is in control and his control is random, heartbreaking, confusing, and unexplainable.  Or, aka, out of control.

But that's not all I have to say.

I'm not hopeless.

I just think we need to look at this God in a different way. 

God is beyond control.  We shouldn't be questioning whether he is in or out of control.  We might do better to say that he is beyond our understanding as to what sort of role he plays in all of this stuff happening or not happening to certain people at certain times.

Saying God is in control is an easy way for us to gloss over what kind of being that is really at work here.  It's kind of a surface answer that we give when something horrible happens but we don't want to think about it too much.

I would say that God is beyond all control.  He is further from control than you or I may be.

Oh, he's not out of control either.  Don't get me wrong.

He's just beyond it.

Why am I saying this?  Who cares what we call it?  Well, its just that I was thinking about all of these things are we drove the rest of the way home.  We had made it 1100 km back over the mountains.  We were safe.

If I believe that God took care of us then I would have to agree that God did not take care of others.  It can become a selfish little habit for us to be happy to be safe while forgetting that others are suffering.

So I tried to think of it all in a different way.

If anything, God was not preoccupied with our safety.  He was focused on caring for the ones that were suffering that night.  He was watching out for them in their time of need.  I have to believe that, in those moments where "God is in control" is proclaimed, it is in many ways true, but for very different reasons than we tend to believe.

Yet, I tend to side with God not being in control, but being beyond it.

To wrap this up let me say this.  If I rejoice when good things happen to me, it is an indirect stab at my brothers and sisters who are suffering.  It is thinking that, for reasons beyond my understanding, God chooses to favour me over others.

Some think this view is validated because they think that God loves Christians more than other people.  This is evil.  Evil is when we put ourselves above others.  Much worse is when we think God does the same thing.

Not much of a conclusion.  I think I'm still chewing on this.

I guess the short version is that people suffer in agony and I am no longer satisfied with the surfacey answer that God makes that kind of stuff happen.